Celebrating 13 years together

22:02
Jemma Taylor-Smith
2
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Last Monday, it was 13 years since Simon and I had been on our very first date. We celebrated by having a rare date night. We went to a BBQ restaurant that we've been wanting to try for a while, the food was fab and it was lovely to spend some quality time together and reflect on the past 13 years. We also talked about our very first date...

We had known each other a while. It's quite a complicated story, but I knew Simon through his sister, Vanessa. She was, at the time, the girlfriend of my best friend's older brother. In fact, we probably first met when I was 13. Simon's 7 years older than me, so he was probably 20 at the time. I remember going to his 21st birthday party, when I was 14! At the time I would've never have believed that all these years later we'd be together with three wonderful children!

So, how did we end up going on a date?

At the time I was at university in a small town near Liverpool. I'd come home during the Easter break and Vanessa had recently split up with my friend's brother and had moved back to her mum and dad's. Simon was living there too. Vanessa, is a hairdresser, and has always done my hair, so I went round to her mum and dad's to have my hair done. Whilst there Simon and I got chatting and it was nice.

During the Easter break, I went out with Vanessa a few times and sometimes Simon would be there. Being sneaky I managed to get his mobile number from Vanessa and when I went back to uni we would chat by text message or on Hotmail messenger (I can't remember it's proper name anymore!).

In one of these chats, Simon invited me to go and see Kylie with him in Manchester. Unfortunately I had exams at the time and I couldn't go, so we arranged to go out for a drink when I came home for the summer.

And we did. On 1st June 2002, which was a gorgeous sunny day, I spent the day sunbathing in the garden in prep for our date. We'd arranged to go to the cinema and have a drink afterwards.

We had a lovely evening. Simon paid for everything, which impressed me and we got on really well. We went to a couple of bars after the film and just spent the evening chatting. We were so deep in conversation that the pub started to close. I think we could've talked all night.

I'd never felt as at ease with a guy, as I did with Simon. I'd always felt that with other men I couldn't really be myself and tried to be who I thought they wanted me to be, which is never good! He was also such a gentleman.

My day in the garden had resulted in me getting sunburn on my face and throughout the evening it got pinker and pinker. It didn't seem to put him off and we still laugh about it now.

Once we'd got kicked out of the pub, I drove him home and we had a lovely kiss outside his parent's house. I drove home knowing that something special had began...

And here we are now, 13 years later - married, with three gorgeous babies. I know it's a cliché, but time really does fly! It feels like yesterday when we went on that date and since then we've made some amazing memories together. He really is my best friend and the kindest man I know!

Here are some photo's from our first few years together. As it was so long ago we don't have any digital snaps, so these are all photo's of the photographs in our album, hence the quality. Personally I think this add to the appeal!